Last Session at the David Jones Centre

The last session at the David Jones Centre was held  on 11th April) and we still don't have a new venue sorted out :-(

This now being a state of emergency, and my attempts to tap into my Housing Associations Tenant's Involvement scheme having fallen onto barren land, we have decide on two courses of events.

1)  Approach the Quakers, who sometimes let groups use their hall cheap or free if it for the community benefit.
2)  Carry on with steps to become constitutionalised and open bank account.

Progress is being made but slowly due to other commitments/holidays etc.  We are getting there slowly.

In the meantime, we are back to rehearsing in my living room.  Think due to small space, using some of the enrollment rituals to facilitate further engagement with people's roles will be appropriate and also some sharing of the two new stories.  Also, experiment with different percussive/musical sounds to accompany movements.  Oh yes - and experiment with moving only one body part at a time - how does this look when the whole group do it very slowly?  Also some quick frantic movements, which will occasionally add contrast to the usual slow ones.

Anyway, about Monday.

What an interesting session!  We had two new people arrive - one who will be joining us permanently, who specialises in music, and one who just came to see what it's about.  Of course they both had to join in the full session.  We also had an artist join us for the first half of the session, because hopefully she will be helping us create the masks and costumes for the performance.

For the benefit of the regular members present we started the session with an excersise aimed at relaxation and then using guided visualisation, the members went on a journey to find their "creature".  The creature is the being - animal, person, god, hero etc, that the actor will be embodying in the performance.  In order to help the actors to use their imagination to create a stronger image of the creature to be embodied, I guided them on a hunt, to find the creature, and upon finding it, to have some interaction with it during which they found out more about the creature's purpose, visage, movement etc.  The new member and the visitors each imagined a creature from a story or film that they liked as a child.  Each person spent some time with their creature, and when the guided visualisation was over, they would enrol as this creature in the next part of the session.

Ethics - Issues for mental health clients, fear, nature of the "creature", feeling loss of control.  Probably not appropriate for vulnerable groups, also importance of thorough enrolment and derolement and being guided properly out of the visualisation, to ensure re-engagement with everyday reality.


Returning to the theme of slow movement accompanied by drum and ending in sculpt.  The group made a sculpt enroled as each of their creatures.  I asked for them to make the creature sculpts interact to that the final group sculpt told a story.  The group used different levels and took in different elements of mood and purpose.  Three group sculpts were created and the final one was examined by all as we took it in turn replacing another member's sculpt as that member walked around the final 3d image.

Following this, we returned to the two stories that we started last week.  The two main characters had had a chance to create strong imaginary impressions of their creatures, and this came out quite strongly in the performances. We started with the Fisherman story, which is very sad, concerning loss and grief and followed it with the Badger Kettle, which is quite comical and quirky.  Next week we hope that a dance/movement person will be coming along to help us to find ways to engage with some of the more difficult movement parts - such as the Badger Kettle and the Storm in The Good Thunder.